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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document657_ Filed 04/29/22 Page 34 of 45 ran the risk of moving the jury away from consideration of the core of criminality alleged in the Indictment.® The appropriate approach was to instruct the jury on the one and only predicate state offense for the Mann Act counts charged in the Indictment: New York Penal Law Section 130.55. For that reason, the Court also rejected the Defendant’s request to repeat in the charge the limiting instructions as to Kate’s and Annie’s testimony and the Defendant’s request, raised for the first time at the charging conference and well after completion of her testimony, to include an unspecified limiting instruction as to Jane’s New Mexico testimony. Trial Tr. at 2773-77. During the witnesses’ testimony, the jury had yet to be instructed on the meaning of “illegal sexual activity as alleged in the indictment.” But it was unnecessary to repeat the limiting instructions alongside the charge’s definition of “illegal sexual activity.” Jd. at 2774-75. The jury now had that phrase clearly defined as a violation of New York Penal Law Section 130.55. In sum, the jury instructions charged that the jury could convict the Defendant only on the predicate state offense of New York law. The jury is presumed to have followed these instructions. See United States v. Joyner, 313 F.3d 40, 47 (2d Cir. 2002). At bottom, the Defendant asks the Court to speculate based on an ambiguous note that the jury disregarded Jane’s substantial testimony about travel to New York and sexual conduct in New York and further assumed a violation of New York law could be based on conduct only in New Mexico. It is hardly plausible, let alone substantially likely, that this was the jury’s 8 The Defendant’s proposed instruction on other jurisdictions’ ages of consent first stated that “[t]o prove Counts One and Three, the government must establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Maxwell acted with the intent that the minors would engage in sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.” Request to Charge at 51. It then instructed on the ages of consent in several jurisdictions and stated that “[i]f the individual was at or above the age of consent in the relevant jurisdiction when the sexual activity occurred, then for the purposes of Counts One and Three, the sexual activity was not illegal.” Jd. at 52. This proposed instruction would likely have created the confusion the Defendant raises now. 34 DOJ-OGR-00010400